Mozilla

Archive for May 29th, 2008

The Approach of Summer

May 29th, 2008

Summer is staring here at Mozilla. What that means is not primarily summer vacation. It means summer interns. A 3 to 4 month influx of students working full time on Mozilla. That means the number of full time folks grows by 20 or 25% almost overnight. These folks bring new perspectives, new skills, new expertise, new ideas, new questions, as well as a bunch of new people to get to know. It’s a great time.

Our intern program is a bit unusual. We don’t have special intern projects. We don’t identify special niches where people can dip their toe in the water for a summer.

We identify critical areas of our technology, our product, our outreach, our marketing, our websites, our content, our testing, our localization, etc where a smart, engaged person can make a difference. We expect to get every intern immersed in such an area. We want the work our interns do to affect the lives of 200,000,000 people, just as the work of other participants does.

This isn’t a dream, and it isn’t naive. We did this last summer, when our interns made giant contributions to the product we’re shipping today. We can do this because of how we work and the abilities of our interns. Our interns don’t get a free pass — they live within the processes, policies and discipline we apply to all contributors. They don’t need a free pass — the openness of our development system means that good work is seen and can be incorporated quickly.

Also, it’s a great excuse to drag bunches of people up to the circus gym for some Flying Trapeze lessons 🙂

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